


The Water Bear Equation

by TUNiU



Series: Tardigrades are Extremophiles [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Season/Series 03, the always present medical inaccuracy of a man mutated with tardigrade dna, the cold equation - Freeform, tilly says the f-word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Once again we explore a situation Paul Stamets just shouldn't survive. And once again Tilly is the one involved. This time: hanging off a cliff edge.
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets, Paul Stamets & Sylvia Tilly
Series: Tardigrades are Extremophiles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991209
Comments: 1
Kudos: 52





	The Water Bear Equation

Clods of dirt rained down on Tilly’s face from the cliff top. It coated her face and entered her eyes, but she couldn’t protect herself. Both hands were holding onto a thick root protruding slightly from the cliff’s edge. She was only an inch from the top, but she couldn’t lift herself up due to the weight of Paul at her waist. The small part of her brain not occupied with sheer terror wondered at how she got herself into this situation: hanging off the side of a cliff with Paul hanging off her belt.

They had been surveying some plant life on some lovely planet to stock the ship with fresh food stores, and the cliff had collapsed under their weight. She told herself she knew why she kept getting into ridiculous situations like this--such as getting eaten by mushroom aliens, and watching her friends die, and volunteering to travel 900 years into the future--because she wanted to be a starfleet captain, so she had joined the best and brightest crew of Discovery. Every single action of hers leading her inexorably to this point. So here she was, her hands and arms straining under their combined weight as they hung connected to solid ground only by a remarkably strong tree root.

"So this sucks," Tilly screamed. "Can you climb up me?"

"Not really," Paul admitted.

"WHAT?" she screamed looking down. Paul hung down from one hand wrapped around her belt. His other hand hung from a horrifically dislocated shoulder.

The ground wasn't so far away. Tilly wondered at that. It was definitely far enough to kill them, but that wasn't such a large distance after all. She tried to pull them up, but no matter how she strained, she couldn't make her elbows bend to lift herself.

"Shit!" she whimpered.

"Bad news?" Paul asked, staring down at the ground.

She didn't answer.

"So I have a theory," he continued. "But you're really not gonna like it."

"I am all ears," she snarked.

"I'm gonna let go, fall to my probably-not-death and then you can climb up and request a beam out."

"What the fuck," she screamed. "That is not a good theory!"

"Oh, no. The theory is that I'll survive."

Tilly glared down at Paul. His head was at the perfect height for her to kick some sense into him. She almost did, if not for the fact he was her superior officer, and more importantly it might make him lose his grip.

"That is not a plan," she said.

"Tardigrades are extremophiles, they can survive pretty much anything."

"You are NOT a tardigrade."

"Part of me is," he stated plainly. "Tilly."

"Don't you dare."

"Do not blame yourself," he said.

"No!"

Paul let go. The fall truly wasn't that long. He landed on his back, bounced once, and didn't move. A puddle of blood slowly spread out from his body.

"Shit!" she stared. Then she pulled herself up. She got her elbows onto the cliff top and under her chest, then she rolled away from the edge.

Still gasping for breath, she flipped open her communicator. "Discovery," she queried.

The device bleeped with the affirmative ping. 

"Two for emergency beam out to sickbay," she told them.

The transporter scan lines pixelated into existence around her, erasing the cliff side and the planet and materializing her in Discovery's sickbay.

She stay laying on the floor for a moment, as the medical crew swarmed around the vastly more needy Paul. Then she sat up woozily and made her way to sit on a biobed in the corner, where she could stay out of everyone's way.

The fall had done a number on her hands, arms, face and chest. But she could wait. The privacy shield went up around Paul's bed.

Hours passed before anyone could attend to her.

“How is he?” Tilly asked the nurse. The privacy field around Paul’s bed was still up. The nurse had just walked through it, ghostly emerging from what looked like a solid wall.

“He’ll live,” he said.

There was blood on his jacket, a lot of blood. The nurse went off into the storage room and came back wheeling a small tray with several tools. A privacy field rose around them. He had Tilly take off her uniform jacket, shirt and bra. He ran a small regenerator over her bruises and cuts.

The nurse rolled two thin sheaths over Tilly’s arms up to her shoulders. “Leave this on for a day, to help your torn muscles heal,” he told her. “You can de-fabricate them afterwards.” He helped her into her bra and shirt. She left the jacket unzipped.

“Can I see him?” she asked.

“They’re still working on him,” he said. “It will be a while until he wakes up.”

* * *

Paul woke up. This was a surprise to him, as he had only been 38 percent confident in his ability to survive. He tried to speak. His first words were preceded by coughing, hacking, and swallowing a sip of water from a glass held by Hugh.

“Tilly?” he asked.

“A few scrapes and bruises,” Hugh answered patiently.

Paul felt his eyes close in relief. “Good.” 

A long moment passed filled with silence on Paul’s part, and staring intently on Hugh’s part.

“I sense you’re angry with me,” Paul offered quietly. He looked up at his husband’s face.

Hugh gently placed the glass of water on the bedside table. He smiled and said, “incandescent with rage.”

“Oh….I saved Tilly….and I’m alive?”

“There are 206 bones in the adult human body,” Hugh began.

“Uh….” Paul murmured, not knowing where Hugh was going with this.

“Do you know how many pieces you were in when you arrived?”

Something told Paul to stay silent.

“Five hundred and twelve.” Hugh gently caressed Paul’s cheek. Then he rubbed his hand back over and over through his hair. “We have just spent several days meticulously aligning every shard like the world’s worst jigsaw puzzle.”

Again Paul said nothing.

“You are now fully intact," he said.

“Yay?”

“Do you know what I’ll do if you do something as stupid as this again?” Hugh asked maliciously.

“No.”

“The same thing I did this time:” Hugh continued caressing Paul’s hair. “Sob uncontrollably into your pillow so sure you were going to die after I spent 23 hours piecing you together and you weren’t even half done but the others forced me to sleep because my hands were shaking too much.” He spoke the sentence in a monotonous rapid one-breathed rush.

Paul’s heart shattered. “Hugh?” 

“You really have to stop this.” Hugh began crying, tears rolling down his cheeks. “You never used to be so self-sacrificing.”

“It was Tilly, she would have fallen too.”

“Why can’t you be the cold-hearted bastard I fell in love with?”

“Caring about people is not a bad thing.”

“It is when it takes you away from me! Shit….you can’t do this again. You just can’t.”

“Okay,” Paul swore, lying. 

They both knew he was lying, but Hugh didn’t call him on it. He just pushed a button on the bio-bed’s keypad. The privacy screen dropped, revealing a waiting wheelchair. 

“You’re off duty for a week, doctor’s orders.”

“A week?” Paul asked.

“Five hundred and twelve pieces,” Hugh repeated. “The good news is all that’s left is bed rest. We kept you unconscious for _all_ the painful parts. Say thank you.”

He obeyed, saying, “thank you.”

Hugh adjusted the bed frame so it rose up behind Paul, gently folding him into a sitting position. Then he helped Paul take one step and then another to sit in the wheelchair. He rolled him out of sickbay.

* * *

The journey to their quarters took a detour to the mess-hall. Hugh parked Paul’s wheelchair at a table so that he would be out of the way as Hugh went to the replicators and retrieved, what Paul realized was, dinner going by the ship’s chronometer. 

Several crewmen took furtive glances at Paul, still in hospital scrubs. The looks never lasted longer than a second, just long enough to establish that 1) it was Lt. Cmdr Stamets in the chair and 2) he was alive enough they could stop wondering about his condition. It was mildly humiliating, and Paul told Hugh this when he returned carrying two trays of food and drink.

Hugh gently shoved the trays at Paul so he could hold them in his lap. “I’m sorry,” Hugh began speaking. “Was that you saying ‘ _I’m sorry I shattered my skeleton into five hundred and twelve pieces and then made my adoring husband who I love so much piece me back together_ ’?”

“Maybe?”

“I think it was.” Hugh grabbed the handles on the back of the chair and began pushing Paul out of the room. 

“Are you...going to be using that against me forever?” Paul asked, not really minding either way the answer went.

Hugh thought quietly for a moment. “Probably just for the next few weeks,” he answered.

“Oh good.”

“I’m sure you’ll do something else by then.”

Together they made their way down the corridors towards their quarters. Soon after they were in the residential section of the ship, the sound of running feet approached. Paul noticed Tilly’s hair before he noticed her face. It bloomed and continued moving from inertia once she stopped in front of them. 

“Hey,” she said, pushing her back over her shoulders. She was off-duty, judging by the fact she wore casual clothes.

Paul stared down in judgement at her fuzzy slippers. She really should know better than to try and run in slippers. He didn’t say that. Instead he said, “are you okay?”

“ _I’m_ fine,” she said incredulously. “You’re the one who….” she waved at him, indicating the memory of injuries he no longer had. “Are you okay now?”

With his hands full of trays of food, Paul couldn’t pat Hugh’s hand like he wanted to, so he rested his head back so he knocked into Hugh’s forearm. “My dear doctor patched me up.” Together the three of them started walking.

“Please don’t do that again,” Tilly blurted out.

“Tilly. Hugh stop. Tilly come here.” Paul shuffled the trays a bit and wedged them against his chest so he could get a hand free. He reached out and grabbed Tilly’s hand as they paused in the corridor.

“Eventually, we were both going to fall if I had hung on, you have to know that.”

She looked away.

“It’s the cold equation: I was dead no matter what, as soon as the situation occurred. But if I went first, you might live. It was a fluke of my mutation that I survived. Next time you’re in this type of situation you might not get so lucky….and being captain means facing a lot of cold equations.”

Tilly stared at Paul, tears welling in her eyes. Then,

“What’s that face for?” Paul asked.

Determinedly, she grabbed each food tray, and placed it on the floor next to the wheel, one after another. Then she leaned down and gave Paul a massive hair-filled hug. “I’m really glad you’re alive,” she said.

He spat out some hair. She stood up, then lifted and returned each tray to Paul’s lap. She nodded at them respectfully and then strode off back the way she came. Hugh began pushing Paul towards their quarters.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he began.

Hugh hummed.

“She wants to be captain, she has to internalize the fact that people are going to die for her, _because_ of her, _instead_ of her.”

Hugh hummed again and said heavily, “almost everyone she has ever known or loved has already died just from the passage of time, let’s not add you to her list so soon.”

Paul knew immediately that Hugh wasn’t just talking about Tilly. The doors to their quarters swished open, and then shut behind them. Hugh wheeled Paul to the table, and moved their food trays off his lap onto the table. Paul reached out and held Hugh’s hand. He kissed Hugh’s knuckles and rubbed his face into his palm.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“I know,” Hugh said.

They ate their dinner holding hands.

**Author's Note:**

> *shrug*


End file.
